A call center is a facility for receiving and/or placing large volumes of telephone calls. The calls are received and placed by call servers, such as human agents or automatic response units. Such call centers typically include an automatic call distributor for assigning each incoming call to a call server. Call centers also typically include a predictive dialer for placing outgoing calls that, if answered, are each assigned to a call server.
In some call centers, agents are also assigned to non-call tasks, such as filling out forms, writing letters, or running credit checks. Call centers in which agents are also assigned to non-call tasks are also called service centers. Assignment of these non-call tasks is generally accomplished manually or handled by a workflow system that is distinct from the automatic call distributor or predictive dialer that assigns phone calls to agents.
Conventionally, the automatic call distributor, the predictive dialer, and the workflow system operate independently to assign calls and non-call tasks, respectively, to agents. To accommodate the independence between these two components, a call center supervisor generally manually divides agent resources between calls and non-call tasks in a static, predetermined manner. For example, a first group of agents may be dedicated to conducting calls, while a second, distinct group of agents is dedicated to performing non-call tasks. As another example, certain agents may be dedicated to conducting calls every morning, and dedicated to performing non-call tasks every afternoon.
Such call centers usually succeed in making a certain amount of progress in handling both calls and non-call tasks. Depending on the aptness of the manual division of agent resources and the particular pattern of calls and non-call tasks experienced, however, unacceptable levels of service are often obtained for either calls, non-call tasks, or both. In cases in which it is essential to ensure high levels of service, it is often necessary for call center supervisors to overstaff the pool of agents, at significant cost.
Based on these disadvantages of conventional call centers, which are shared by similar transaction processing systems of several other types, a facility for more effectively managing call server resources and other transaction server resources would have significant utility.